The Magic of Maple Syrup

This legendary sweet treat that hails from North America has long been associated with breakfast foods like pancakes, but it can easily be wed with fruits and vegetables to create a wide variety of other sensational dishes.

For example, maple syrup can transform roasted autumn vegetables (like acorn or butternut squash), berries, and oatmeal, and it can be used as a substitute for honey or refined sugar in salad dressings and baked goods.

I will share a recipe using maple syrup in a minute…but first, let’s find out more about the magic of maple syrup.

How Is Maple Syrup Made?

As most of us know, maple syrup is made from the sap of the maple tree.

There are several different types of maple trees, including the sugar maple, the red maple, and the black maple.

Maple trees store starch in their trunks and roots.

In the spring, the starch is converted to sugar that rises in the sap.

To collect the sap, trees are tapped by boring holes into their trunks. Once collected, the sap is heated. The water evaporates, leaving a concentrated syrup.

The maple season lasts 8-10 weeks, but sap flow is heaviest during a 10-20 day period in early spring.

A maple syrup production farm is called a sugarbush or sugarwood. The sap is boiled in a sugar house (also called a sugar shack).

Maple syrup production is labor intensive.

It takes 30-50 gallons of sap to create one gallon of maple syrup; one tree yields between 10 to 14 gallons in a season. Furthermore, a tree must be at least 30 years old and 12 inches in diameter before it can be tapped.

Until the 1930s, the US was the leading maple syrup producer. Today, Canada produces 71 percent of the world’s pure maple syrup, with 91 percent of the Canadian production taking place in Quebec.

The state of Vermont is the largest producer in the US, creating about 5.5 percent of the world’s maple syrup supply.

There are several different “grades” of maple syrup, depending on the color.

In the US, maple syrup is classified either as grade A or grade B. Grade A is further subdivided into 3 groups: Light, Medium and Dark Amber. Grade B is the darkest of all.

The darker the syrup, the stronger the flavor. Dark syrups tend to be used for baking while lighter syrups are used directly on foods like pancakes or waffles.

Enjoy the treat!

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Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD

Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD is Founding Director of UC Davis Integrative Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine at the University of California Davis. Blending a life-long passion for food and nutrition with over 20 years of scientific experience in genetic research, Dr. Oliveira is devoted to educating people about how food and lifestyle choices can affect genetic expression–i.e. how genes are turned on and off and either cause disease or promote health. She is a native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and has lived in the US since 2003.